General Henri Giraud had put himself at the service of the Allies and been smuggled out of France and transported to North Africa. Commander of the French 7th Army before the debacle of 1940 and imprisoned since that time, Giraud had escaped captivity and fled to unoccupied France earlier in the year. The danger was that he would now provide a figurehead for French resistance in North Africa and a focus of support for the Allies. Suspicion, which soon proved justified, was also mounting by the hour that Admiral Jean Francois Darian, too, head of the French armed forces, was preparing to change sides. The Americans had won Darian over just before the ‘Torch’ landings with an offer to recognize him as head of the French government. Inevitable conflict with the British, who favoured de Gaulle, was to be obviated when a young French monarchist assassinated Darian just before Christmas.301
Hitler, as we noted, had stressed the need to be ready to occupy southern France in his talks with Mussolini at the end of April. The concern about Giraud and Darian now meant that any thought of concessions to the French had been dissipated. When Ciano met Hitler on the evening of 9 November — Laval was travelling by car and expected only during the night — he had made up his mind. Laval’s input would be irrelevant. Hitler would not ‘modify his already definite point of view: the total occupation of France, landing in Corsica, a bridgehead in Tunisia’.302 When he eventually arrived, Laval, looking like a minor French provincial worthy, out of place among the military top brass and trying to pass pleasantries about his long journey, was treated with scarcely more than contempt. Hitler demanded landing points in Tunisia. Laval tried to wring concessions from Italy. Hitler refused to waste time on such deliberations. Laval, anxious to avoid responsibility for yielding territory to the Axis, suggested he should be faced with a
While Laval was in the next room having a smoke, Hitler gave the order to occupy the remainder of France next day — 11 November, and the anniversary of the Armistice of 1918. Laval was to be informed next morning.303 In a letter to Marshal Petain and a proclamation to the French people on 11 November, Hitler justified the occupation through the necessity to defend the coast of southern France and Corsica against Allied invasion from the new base in North Africa.304 That morning, German troops occupied southern France without military resistance, in accordance with the plans for ‘Operation Anton’ which had been laid down in May.305
At the Berghof for a few days, Hitler’s mask of ebullience slipped a little. Below found him deeply worried about the Anglo-American actions. He was also concerned about supplies difficulties in the Mediterranean, which British submarines had intensified. His trust in the Italians had disappeared. He was sure that they were leaking intelligence about the movement of German supply ships to the British. The deficiencies of the Luftwaffe also preoccupied him. Goring, Below heard, was not on top of things. Hitler preferred to deal with the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Hans Jeschonnek about detailed matters. Defence of the Reich depended too much on planes that were in the wrong place, or prevented from flying through bad weather. More flak artillery was needed in the vicinity of German cities. As regards the eastern front, he was hoping for ‘no new surprises’, but feared a large-scale Soviet offensive was imminent.306
VII
On 19 November, Zeitzler told Hitler that the Soviet offensive had begun. Immediately, the Soviet forces to the north-west and west of Stalingrad broke through the weak part of the front held by the Romanian 4th Army. General Ferdinand Heim’s 48th Panzer Corps was sent in, but failed to heal the breach. Furious, Hitler dismissed Heim. He later ordered him to be sentenced to death — a sentence not carried out only through the intervention of Schmundt.307 The next day the Red Army’s ‘Stalingrad Front’ broke through the divisions of the Romanian 4th Army south of the city and met up on 22 November with the Soviet forces that had penetrated from north and west. With that, the 220,000 men of the 6th Army were completely encircled.308
Hitler had decided to return to the Wolf’s Lair that evening. His train journey back from Berchtesgaden to East Prussia took over twenty hours, owing to repeated lengthy stops to telephone Zeitzler. The new Chief of the General Staff insisted on permission being granted to the 6th Army to fight their way out of Stalingrad. Hitler did not give an inch.309 Already on 21 November he had sent an order to Paulus: ‘6th Army to hold, despite danger of temporary encirclement.’310 On the evening of 22 November, he ordered: ‘The army is temporarily encircled by Russian forces. I know the 6th Army and its Commander-in-Chief and know that it will conduct itself bravely in this difficult situation. The 6th Army must know that I am doing everything to help it and to relieve it.’311 He thought the position could be remedied. Relief could be organized to enable a break-out. But this could not be done overnight. A plan was hastily devised to deploy Colonel-General Hermann Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army, south-west of Stalingrad, to prepare an attack to relieve the 6th Army. But it would take about ten days before it could be attempted. In the meantime, Paulus had to hold out, while the troops were supplied by air-lift. It was a major, and highly risky operation. But Goring assured Hitler that it could be done. Jeschonnek did not contradict him. Zeitzler, however, vehemently disagreed. And from within the Luftwaffe itself, Colonel-General Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, who normally had Hitler’s ear, raised the gravest doubts both on grounds of the weather (with temperatures already plummeting, icy mists, and freezing rain icing up the wings of the planes) and of the numbers of available aircraft. Hitler chose to believe Goring.312
Hitler’s decision to air-lift supplies to the 6th Army until relief arrived was taken on 23 November. By then he had heard from Paulus that stores of food and equipment were perilously low and certainly insufficient for a defence of the position. Paulus sought permission to attempt to break out. Weichs, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, and Chief of the General Staff Zeitzler also fully backed this as the only realistic option.313 Zeitzler, evidently acting on the basis of a remarkable misunderstanding, actually informed Weichs at 2a.m. on 24 November that he had ‘persuaded the Fuhrer that a break-out was the only possibility of saving the army’. Within four hours the General Staff had to transmit exactly the opposite decision by Hitler: the 6th Army had to stand fast and would be supplied from the air until relief could arrive.314 The fate of almost quarter of a million men was sealed with this order.
Hitler was not totally isolated in military support for his decision. Field-Marshal von Manstein had arrived that morning, 24 November, at Army Group ? headquarters to take command, as ordered by Hitler three days earlier, of a new Army Group Don (which included the trapped 6th Army). The main objective was to shore up the weakened front south and west of Stalingrad, to secure the lines to Army Group A in the Caucasus. He also took command of General Hoth’s attempt to relieve the 6th Army.315 But in contrast to Paulus, Weichs, and Zeitzler, Manstein did not approve an attempt to break out before reinforcements arrived, and took an optimistic view of the chances of an air-lift. Manstein was one of Hitler’s most trusted generals. His assessment can only have strengthened Hitler’s own judgement.316
By mid-December, Manstein had changed his view diametrically. Richthofen had persuaded him that, in the atrocious weather conditions, an adequate air-lift was impossible. Even if the weather relented, air supplies could not be sustained for any length of time.317 Manstein now pressed on numerous occasions for a decision to allow the 6th Army to break out.318 But by then the chances of a break-out had grossly diminished; in fact, once Hoth’s relief attempt was held up in heavy fighting some fifty kilometres from Stalingrad and some days later finally forced back, they rapidly became non-existent.319 On 19 December, Hitler once more rejected all pleas to consider a break-out. Military information in any case now indicated that the 6th Army, greatly weakened and surrounded by mighty Soviet forces, would be able to advance a maximum of thirty kilometres to the south-west — not far enough to meet up with Hoth’s relief Panzer army.320 On 21 December, Manstein asked Zeitzler for a final decision on whether the 6th Army should attempt to break out as long as it could still link with the 57th Panzer Corps, or whether the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe could guarantee air-supplies over a lengthy period of time. Zeitzler cabled back that Goring was confident that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army, though Jeschonnek was by now of a different opinion. Hitler allowed an inquiry of the 6th Army Command about the distance it could expect to advance towards the south if the other fronts could be held. The reply came that there was fuel for twenty kilometres, and that it would be unable to hold position for long. Hoth’s army was still fifty-four kilometres away.321 Still no decision was taken. ‘It’s as if the Fuhrer is no longer capable [of taking one],’ noted the OKW’s war-diarist Helmuth Greiner.322
6th Army Command itself described the tactic of a mass break-out without relief from the outside —
